#I have some dialogue written and like half of an outline so far

[geneticdriftwood]

I just finished reading green arrow 2023 and I’m thinking about a pre-nu52 dickroy au set shortly after bruce returns to life and dick goes back to being nightwing, but with lian’s current backstory mixed in. the timeline is pretty much standard pre-boot canon, with the major exception that lian “died” like a month before bruce did, and then got yoinked around through time and space, eventually landing in gotham.

so at the time the story starts, she’s ~14 and running around alleytown doing vigilante stuff as cheshire cat, and befriends damian, who’s ~12-13 and struggling to adjust to life with bruce back. they end up working an investigation together (damian doesn’t tell anyone about this) and end up accidentally teleported to a secret base on a distant planet. cue wacky home alone style alien base sabotage hijinks! but they’re gonna need to get home eventually, so they hack some comms to send a coded message back to dick where damians like “richard come pick me up also btw im here with lian she has blue hair and says she’s your niece”.

meanwhile dick is struggling to figure out how to be himself again now that bruce is back, and is still helping out too much in gotham while repressing his conflicted feelings about everything. he and roy aren’t really talking, because a month after roy’s daughter died, dick dropped everything and got sucked into gotham as batman and wasn’t there for roy at all. and there were reasons for that! bruce was dead! but roy did everything to be there for dick when donna died, and this is part of a pattern of dick���s, and there’s a lot of hurt and they haven’t talked about it at all.

but suddenly lian is alive and with damian on an alien planet! naturally dick and roy go on a rescue mission road trip (kory helps with space stuff), and in the process are forced to actually work through all their many years of built up issues. so they’re having vicious arguments and opening up about grief and working through painful memories, all while fighting their way through an alien jungle full of giant carnivorous bugs or something. and we cut between that and little cameos of lian and damian doing fun spykids-but-with-aliens antics! (and eventually we get a happy ending where dick commits to choosing roy & lian & damian & himself over bruce & gotham.)

[tortoisebore]

any tips for new writers?

(btw i am literally in love with hey, sharpshooter it had me up all night reading it <3)

**disclaimer that i am by no means a person that has any actual real education/experience in writing or character work or world building & i can only give you what has worked for me & the things i’ve kept in mind while writing my little gay fanfiction 💞👯‍♀️

my main big picture tips are not backed up in research, they’re just what’s worked for me:

1. make a deeply detailed outline. spending a lot of time writing a very long, detailed outline at the beginning helped me a lot when i felt stuck in the back half of the fic. the outline changed a lot from when i started it, and i added little notes and ideas for scenes or dialogues or character traits along the way, but all of my big idea generation happened there and it helped me a lot with pacing the plot and building the characters and their relationship gradually. also** it was not some sort of technically perfect, structured outline—this is what it looked like:

fr just get all of your ideas down on a page in whatever way works for you. this is the place to word-dump to your heart’s content!!

2. make the first draft bad. fr just get it in the page. if you’re not feeling it or don’t have any specific word choices in your head when you’re writing the first draft, don’t worry about the dialogue being realistic or having perfect flowery metaphors or beautiful descriptive world building. literally just get it on the page in whatever way you can.

3. connect the dots between the type of writing you like to read and what you like to write. i loveee books with flowery prose and metaphors and natural dialogue, and i found that i really enjoyed writing those things, so they were the goals i focused on while i was doing all my editing/second draft writing. on the flip side, if you like to read extensive world-building but find yourself struggling to find motivation/inspiration to write it, don’t. try to write how you want to write, but put more emphasis on writing how you like to write.

4. don’t force it. this has been crucial to me bc i work a 9-5 in the art/design industry and i only have so much creative energy to go around, so i have to ration it carefully. if you try to force yourself to write when you’re really not feeling it, or when you’re out of motivation and frustrated and tired, it will 100% show in your writing.

5. don’t think about posting your work. for 99% of us, this is a hobby. posting your work is not a hobby, creating it is!! rn we exist in a world where people view creativity and art solely as content to be consumed, and i encourage you to place more emphasis on actually enjoying and finding peace and meaning in the journey of making something rather than the idea of other people consuming it. what it does for you and how it makes you feel is far more important than what it does for the people pressuring you for an update you’re not ready to give them.

and then here are a couple technical/grammatical tips that i learned way back in like 6th grade english or picked up on by reading a million books over the years & still think of constantly:

1. vary your sentence structure!! i am sometimes bad at this and i don’t really pay attention to it in my first drafts, but when i go back and edit i make sure to vary my sentences by length, compound vs. simple, breaking up with semicolons or hyphens, etc. a story that’s written with strong, varied sentence types will read much more naturally and flow better than one that doesn’t

2. be intentional about starting your sentences with different words. again, when i’m writing my first drafts i don’t pay much attention to things like this, but when i’m editing i’m really anal about making sure that my sentences don’t all start with “he” or “[insert name here]” or “it” or whatever. sometimes you can’t work around it, but my goal is to never have two consecutive sentences start with the same word, and i really really try to make sure that two consecutive paragraphs don’t start with the same word

3. say your dialogue out loud. i had the hardest time trying to make my dialogue feel natural at the start but honest to god saying it out loud with all the cadence and emphases you’re writing it with can really help you find ways to make it feel like actual people talking. also, don’t be afraid to use ellipses and hyphens and break up a string of dialogue with an action, like a character sighing or biting the inside of their cheek or moving their hands. people don’t talk in perfectly-structured sentences. we run-on and don’t use punctuation and we restart or hesitate in the middle of a sentence—include that!!

[gemmahale]

Hii Gemma!

I consider righteous fury to be the mother of all fix-its but my question is actually more about the.... Scope of what's been posted so far, if that makes sense. Obviously you'd have to write The Scene, but did you know going in you'd cover it so thoroughly? You're phenomenal at writing action so I guess I'm wondering how excited you were to delve into the meat of it or if it was something you were kinda nervous to tackle?

-gouge 💛

@pricegouge, I love that you asked this question. 😀 (Also massively flattered on your consideration for it as such a high place of honor.)

I had to sit on this question overnight to gather my thoughts. I have a lot of them. 💚 This has suddenly become my baby of all babies.

Righteous Fury was never meant to be more than an explanation for something John/Soap does in Museum Muse. I never meant it to turn into the behemoth it is now.

I was nervous to tackle the scene - because I had decided that the best way to fix it was to just rewrite what existed. It took me three tries to get Soap's voice right and beyond just reciting what happened in the script/playthrough. Spoiler: video gameplay does not translate well to the written word, so there was a lot of adding and re-watching and fudging that had to happen.

I was exceptionally afraid of being called a cheat - because none of the dialogue up until "the incident" is mine. (That might be wrong - I think I tucked in a few lines or changed the speaker.) None of the action is mine. But all of the emotion, John's backstory, his motives, are mine.

It was an interesting challenge to work with a framework of existing media and expand upon it. Would I do it again? Maybe, if there was another scene so poorly developed and written.

Spoilers for my version below the cut. I pontificate on some specifics and how I made some artistic choices. 💚

It was also hard to choose where to start - do I start when Price is down and Makarov is standing over him? No, I need more lead up. Do I back up to when Soap and Gaz are feigning disinterest in the hacker? No, that's too far back.

Thankfully, the mission brief provided a perfect point - it established John's hatred and resentment for Makarov, and allowed me to ramp up to the point everyone was dreading.

Now, when it comes to making the choice as to how things go down? I'd seen a post about how it could have gone (can't find the reference, if I do, I'll update this). So I started there.

But really, when you live with someone with similar training, you might as well ask them. 😅 Enter: Kallen.

Hoo boy showing him a playthrough of the mission was a choice. (See #Kallen Kvetches for similar commentary, including the time I showed him Triple Frontier. Man had OPINIONS. Half of them on butts and pecs. 😉) But it also spurred on a conversation of what could happen post-Makarov.

We walked through (we're about the same height, like John and Makarov) the shots. Where the script failed and how - John would have had a knife on him. He would have been better trained to respond. Makarov shouldn't have - well, that's not relevant. Sorry. Basically it boiled down to: John's training would have taken over and he would have acted somewhat closely to what I wrote.

I could have written him getting out unscathed. Genuinely nothing more than a few scratches. Kallen thinks that could have been the more likely outcome as we wrote the scene, had Makarov's finger not tightened around the trigger of his firearm as he fell.

But again, I needed a reason for John to be on modified desk duty for Museum Muse. So...uh...sorry bud. 😅 Might as well use my resources for everything, including surgery. (Yes, Kallen went through a similar surgery in his time in. Yeesh.)

Sorry, I think I got way off tangent. I have a detailed outline of what happens as a result of the first two chapters of Righteous Fury, and a rough idea of how things play out in Museum Muse. It's really going to be interesting seeing the same events from two vastly different POV's. (That can also hopefully stand individually.)

But again, this all started out as a way to justify Soap being on bedrest/desk duty and bored out of his mind, messaging a stranger on a message board. 🤷‍♀️ Oops, instead I retconned, world-built and got feelings everywhere. My bad. (I'm not sorry.)

Me, creating this universe:

Also - I haven't said this out loud yet, just implied it. (But if you've gotten this far in my ramblings, you deserve to know it.)

This is also a memorial fic in a way. A lot of inspiration and information comes from Kallen and his experiences in country (obviously, changed locations and names and such). There's a whole swath of people I never got to meet that were family to him, and he's given me permission to include them. 💔

You might have noticed an Officer Hale in Ch 2. Yeah, that one was a blatant insertion of Kallen. I promise the rest probably won't be as heavy handed and obvious to you - it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up!

[luckydragon10]

Bad Bet question:

Do you have scenes that didn't make it into the story? Any that you could share or things you thought about and couldn't find a place for that you still really liked?

I had a lot of half-fleshed out ideas that didn't make the cut.

*** Some Bad Bet SPOILERS under the cut ***

This quote is from Chapter 22:

Kim raises his eyebrows. “A man like Davies…” Kim slowly shakes his head. “He’s gone too far already. But I agree with Khun. We need to be smart about how we do this. If Arm can get me a location, I can get in and gather the intelligence we need.”  “Denied,” Kinn says sharply. 

I actually put this bit into the story as a joke to myself because I had originally outlined for Kim to investigate and get captured by Davies. It was honestly a really a terrible plot line for my story needs, and I hated it. I could FEEL that it was the wrong way to go, so I couldn't even make myself write it. It's what got me hung up during my hiatus. So eventually I scratched it.

Other deleted scenes:

I originally had thoughts around exploring Porsche "sleeping rough" after Kinn sets him free, exploring how he dealt with homelessness, how he would find someplace to sleep at night. But that would have really slowed down the story and wasn't really essential, so I threw Jom at Porsche ASAP to speed things up.

I thought about Kinn throwing a whole "free tattoo day" for his staff as a part of helping Porsche get a tattoo. I was even going to have Vegas and Kinn do a silly little cousin bonding and get small tattoos together. Honestly, I'm cringing even mentioning this now. That idea was over the top and not really fitting with the story. So I toned it down to the cafeteria scene where bodyguards (and an auntie) were showing off.

I originally thought I'd explore Porsche and Chay having more of a rift between them after their reunion, due to the strangeness of being unfamiliar with each other. I went a much more subtle route with that.

Not a scene exactly, but a theme: I had early thoughts around an "is this love even real?" theme that I would play with for both KinnPorsche and KimChay. Ended up ditching that. It really didn't suit the story as it took shape.

There were a lot (a LOT) of half-written dialogue lines, like scrap pieces, that simply didn't make it into the final fic. Many of them were from early brainstorming, me getting a feel for the characters and how they'd be different for Bad Bet.

This is just a tiny, tiny glimpse into what DIDN'T make it into the story. I have about 25-26 pages of super-messy outline in two separate docs, and as I look through the first doc, there's SO much early brainstorming that never made it to the fic.

[haleingstorm]

20 questions for 20 writers

Thanks @hedgehodgy I've never been tagged in a ask game before

How many works do you have on ao3 5!

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

75,882

3. What fandoms do you write for?

That's hard! I have a lot of ideas and half written stuff for a bunch of fandoms but the ones I have posted are Naruto, Percy Jackson, and Marvel.

4.What are your top 5 fics by Kudos?

What We Lost in the Fire (Naruto) .

Safety's an Illusion(Fates all Chance) (PJO)

Forgive me Father for I have Sinned(PJO/Naruto)

Walk in the Shadows of Men who Sold Their Lives to a Dream(PJO/Naruto)

Be not Afraid, Brave the Storm(PJO/Naruto)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Absolutely! It's by far my favorite part about posting. I'm always eager to reply to all the comments even the small ones. Which I think stems from the fact that as a young newbie to fanfics I would always get so excited when an author replied to me. It's also fun!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oh that's hard, a lot of my work is still being posted so I can't answer that without spoilers :).

7.What's the fic you wrote with the happiest endings?

Forgive me Father for I have Sinned probably. It ends super sweet with Poseidon and Percy finally having a conversation and hugs all around! (Of course he's going to get kidnapped soon after by Hera but that's besides the point)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not really. Most of my fics are pretty new which might play a role. I have gotten a couple 'so and so would never say that' kind of thing but not to the point where I've felt offended!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nah, though I've played around with a couple of ideas I find stories with strong platonic connections much more fun to write than ones with romantic ones.

10. Do write crossovers?

Absolutely! crossovers are my bread and butter especially in situations which pull attention towards some of the darker parts that get glossed over in canon because it's the norm(child solider trope I adore you). I absolutely adore reincarnation as well, one of these days I'll get around to writing my MHA x Naruto crossover that lives in my head rent free.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

13 Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, I've just recently gotten into writing fics instead of just day dreaming about them..

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

I don't really have them, again platonic connections are much more interesting to me. I do like a good Tobirama x Madara though.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

What we lost in the fire. It's a time travel Naruto fic and I love the premise so much. The characters are wonderful but I have not done nearly enough outlining and I'm sure I'l write myself into a corner sooner rather than later.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Oh that's hard I actually have no idea. People have commented on my fics that they like how I write the different characters to be very different/have their own personalities and flaws. So maybe that?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

descriptions probably, I'm really bad at describing stuff. And maybe planning I often jump into a project before I have a good idea where it's going to end and trap myself in a corner.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I'd rather not, I just don't know many languages and I'm so afraid of accidentally mixing it up. Besides all the bad stereotypes of bilingual characters and no personal experience makes me shy away from writing one.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Naruto! The fic in mention will never see the light of day but it will always hold a place in my heart(as horrible and badly written as it was)

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Safety's an Illusion(Fate's all Chance) hands down. I love that monster. I wrote the first draft for it in a month. As of right now the second draft is looking to be double the length. It's also the first fic I've been able to confidently have an update schedule for and be confident I'm going to finish it. It is so much fun to write!

Tagging: @fairyspheres (If you're interested!)

This was so much fun! Thanks again @hedgehodgy!

[isabellehemlock]

WIP Tag Game

I was tagged by the phenomenal @astrabear to share the first lines of my WIP’s - because as she said, “because you're active in multiple fandoms and I want to know what you're up to.”

I seperated them by a few categories, but first, for anyone else who might like to play along: @asunlovingde @fablesdelightme @prouvaireafterdark @peri-helia @spacewitchqueen (yes this is me shamelessly trying to get a sneak peek at the Rockstar AU <<;) - but of course, as always, no pressure implied <3

My current already posted WIP’s

Mark of Cain (almost done!) - my Cult AU TOG JoexNicky fic that was technically supposed to be done in March, and then holy heck several illnesses and my poor mom’s health, and etc etc I’m that far behind, but almost ready for the next chapter update, and just a few more to go.  Fingers crossed mid July now!

Nicky felt the rush of blood around his ears drown out the horrible gurgling sounds beside him, yet still his eyes were heavy, half hooded, as he swayed a little from the adrenaline seeping out of him.  His bent legs cramped beneath him, trying to signal that they needed relief from the seated pose he was in, but no internal message could reach him now.  He blinked at the dull ache from his lower half, felt the warmth of the blood that had sprayed onto his bare side dry into sticky streaks.  But he had been covered in so much worse from Cain in the past - what was a little blood in comparison?

Pretty Ballads Hide Bastard Truths - a Witcher prequel featuring Calanthe x Eist (hasn’t been updated in fourteen months, but not abandoned, promise!  Just a lot of life and fandom events in between, whoops!  But I genuinely hope to finish it mid summer)

The island of Hindarsfjall was Eist’s favorite.

Though it was the smallest in the archipelago of Skellige, it was the most vibrant one this time of year, with thick foliage and overgrown vegetation.  The perfect place for a teenage boy to explore and roam in the dense, thick, cluster of trees that kept the worst of the summer heat off of his pale skin.

But it was the fjord, not far from the temple of the Great Mother, Freya, that once again beckoned Eist to the jagged edge on the northern side.  It formed the best jumping off point into the warm spring below, and though bottles of the healing waters were given to visitors (in exchange for a small donation to the temple), a young man in his fourteenth summer found it perfect for blowing off steam.

My soon to be posted WIP’s

“What a great start to our partnership” - DantexAimes (Fast X) (I had genuinely meant for this to get written over the weekend, whoops, but it has been started at least - fully outlined, too!  Special shout out to both @cosima-nova & @you-came-back for their lovely feedback and excitement). 

Dante slipped on the gun strap over his stiff shoulders, the morning workout had left his muscles feeling a bit sore, but it kept him primed for the kind of jobs his father needed him for - and frankly, that alone was worth some of the suffering.  It just felt good to be needed, to be acknowledged, in any capacity, and if that required a little pain along the way, then so be it.

Fandom Event related

“Untitled FTH fic” - Steddyhands - okrrr the only reason I haven’t started writing this one yet (because it’s already outlined, has some dialogue, and I’ve legit been editing scenes in my dreams lol), is because I just know that once I start, I won’t stop, and I’m equally desperate to get one long fic done before diving into another one but SOON, so soon!!  This one is gonna pour out of me the second I start and I can’t wait to deliver it for my lovely bidder and friend @vexbatch - expected upload date: July

@iwtvbigbang x3 - not only have I had the privilege of organizing this with two other mods, but I’m fortunate enough to have snagged three authors and am excited to make some custom art for them soon <3 - posting dates: October

OFMD RBB x2 - I made two pieces, and two authors selected one of each and I even ended up betaing one of them and I cannot wait to share the pieces and the stories!  I ended up getting so inspired by the some scenes shared by a second that I ended drawing another piece, too lol - posting dates: June & July

Steddie BB x2 - I just got paired in this one, and am so excited to share that I’ll be making some sweet summertime love art, as well as an Anastasia AU piece (I feel giddy about it!!) - posting dates: October-December

IWTV Art Coven group project - just wrapped the tarot, and working on the calendar next - proceeds go to charity - posting dates: November

Alsoplusalso - my first comic is coming in a few weeks (but to keep it a surprise for the giftee I can’t say more atm)

ANNNND - launching an interest check in October for an IWTV Zine that myself and the IWTV BB mods will be running (super stoked!)  All proceeds go to charity as well 

But other than that, same ol’ same ol’ lol

[mellowthorn]

I was tagged by @gwenllian-in-the-abbey, thank you so much for the tag! (and sorry that it has taken me forever to do this)

How many works do you have on AO3?

Three currently (I’ve written more for other fandoms but I orphaned those years ago)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

55,643

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I only post for Realm of the Elderlings, but I also sometimes write Kingdom Hearts fics purely for myself

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Uhh, I only have three on my current account, but in order, Someone Other Than Us, After The Sun Has Set and then Ever Your Fool.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes, or at least I try to! I have a bad habit of thinking my response but never actually writing it down and then forgetting about it completely... But I try my best to remember to reply, even if it ends up taking a while.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Neither of my finished fics/oneshots have closed endings, so I guess it depends on what you imagine happens afterwards. Neither of them are exactly happy though.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I haven’t finished posting it yet, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that After The Sun Has Set will soon take that title. I mean, it's already happier than anything else that I've written

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I do, occasionally. I don’t know exactly how to describe what kind, other than that my smut scenes tend to be quite sad?? I like using them as a way to explore or exaggerate some complicated character dynamic, and I guess that’s why they often turn into something at least a little uncomfortable. As much as I enjoy reading smut that’s all sexy and romantic, for some reason I can’t write it myself at all haha

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Nah

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Nope

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Fitzloved is my current favourite (and I've never been this intense about a ship before), though Zemyx (from Kingdom Hearts) is the one I always eventually return to

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Last spring I wrote about 45k words of post-Assassin’s Fate happy ending AU. The outline for it is massive, and what I’ve written so far covers maybe one tenth at most. I know I will never have the patience to finish it, but somewhere at the back of my mind I refuse to let it go. I’ve been trying to see if I could turn parts of it into one-shots or something, but who knows what I’ll end up doing 🤷

16. What are your writing strengths?

I’d say I’m fairly good at characterization, as well as building up tragic and angsty scenarios. My favorite thing when writing fanfiction is to take some (usually sad) aspect of a character/relationship/etc and then dive deep into that, and I think I do it pretty well.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

My prose, especially detailed descriptions and creative similes and metaphors and the like. Writing those does not come naturally to me at all, and I feel like I often get stuck using cliches and specific words or phrases, and then have to spend half my time editing to make things less repetitive.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

 Not my thing, I prefer to keep everything in one language.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

 Harry Potter, I think? Way back in like 2008 or 2009.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

From RotE stuff, After the Sun Has Set. It’s the first time I’ve managed to fully write, edit and post a multi-chapter fic from start to finish, and that alone is a huge achievement for me. Writing every chapter from a different character’s PoV was also a really fun (if sometimes frustrating) challenge and I’m really glad to have done it. Outside of RotE, a few years back I wrote this super self-indulgent novel-length Zemyx fic. I never posted it anywhere and it’s kind of crap quality-wise so I never will, but since it’s basically just every romance trope I’ve ever liked, it’s fun to reread for comfort every once in a while.

[mickeymagpie]

20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @marypsue, thank you!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

106 so far!

2. What’s your total word count?

321,819, which is somehow both lower and higher than i expected.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

a whole lot; most recently Rise of the TMNT, my fandom on ao3 with the most works is Rise of the Guardians. lots of rises.

4. Top 5 fics by kudos

The Gravity Falls trans dipper one-shot, the FMA Ishvalan!Elrics AU, an into the spiderverse fic, raven cycle pov outsider, and a star wars force awakens one-shot. i give all my fics long song lyric titles so that's all the info yall are getting lmao.

5. Do you respond to comments?

I always start out trying to respond to everything when i post a new fic, but then i get overwhelmed pretty quick. lo siento mucho.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't usually go for angsty endings tbh! I like a lot of angst in the middle, or i go for kind of bittersweet endings.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

probably that star wars one; force awakens had just come out and i was one of many kylo ren woobifiers who wanted him to have accepted han's invite to come home.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

The most hate i've gotten is on a Different star wars fic where i made Luke trans and some people were Not happy. luckily, i have a permit (i can do what I want).

9. Do you write smut?

yeah lol. i don't post a lot of it though; most of the time i just share it with my discord friends.

10. Do you write crossovers?

all the time all the time babey.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

yes i've been notified 2 or 3 times that someone copied my stuff onto wattpad or ffnet. i usually go report them but don't care enough to follow up.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't think so? not that I can remember. I've had one or two podficced though iirc.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

nnnnot a finished one. my friends and i do a lot of half fic writing and half rp that usually doesn't turn into a polished product (but it's still fun <3).

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

ALL TIME FAVORITE FLYNN AND LUCY TIMELESS. i've never written fic for them and the show isn't even GOOD but god the way they look like "she fixed him" bs on the surface but really they're each so perfect to make up for the other's shortcomings. also i always wanted so badly for someone to tell her to get her dog on a leash <3

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

ahaha,,,, the good omens roleswap fic is burning a hole in my document folder. i have an outline i just have no inspiration/motivation :(

16. What are your writing strengths?

characterization; particularly I've gotten the feedback that i'm good at writing characters in different circumstances from canon while keeping their personalities both Intact and Logically Justifiable.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

ending things, both in the sense that i start a lot of stuff and don't finish it, and the sense that i usually have too many ideas and don't know how/where to cut off a plot.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

google translate always does me dirty so now i usually just write the dialogue in english and use a dialogue tag like "she said in *insert language*"

19. First fandom you wrote for?

iiiiii think it was Rise of the Guardians! before that i mostly did over-dramatic RP on the cricket magazine forums where i had characters like a half-dragon bounty hunter.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

probably the ishvalan elrics fic! fma is already full of a lot of meaty concepts, and it was fun re-conceptualizing the canon plot and character beats while keeping the arching plot intact. stuff like that is like a puzzle to me, it's very satisfying when i finish one and it gets positive feedback!

tagging anyone who wants to do it, because im. so sleepy rn

[onboardsorasora]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers tagged by  @lilyrizzy thank you for the tag! this was insightful for meeeee

1. How many works do you have on ao3? 7 (all my other fandom fics are on different sites)

2. What's your total ao3 word count? 139,751

3. What fandoms do you write for? F1 and InuYasha

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Match Point, Adore You, Teeth, Wreck Me and Random Works

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes! I love squealing together with my readers.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Wreck Me! Lmao people were big mad. Second would probably be that Quest Fic “Tell Max I love him”

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? So far the only fic that’s ended is the Adore You verse. So Teeth has the happiest ending.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Nope. no one has told me to my face/in my ask/comments/DMs that they hate my fics. 

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I do! I have a fic (InuYasha) where there was an art exhibition that devolved into an orgy. No sex pollen needed. I have a smut fic series (also InuYasha) I’ve only been writing rpf for less than a year so I’m behind on the smut.

10. Do you write crossovers? I don’t think I have (def not for F1) but I’m not opposed. I just need to know a lot about both worlds to feel comfy

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of. I’m also afraid to go looking

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Not that I know of, and I’m afraid to go looking lol

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? My DMs are just chat fics all day every day. I’ve outlined like 2 fics which I’ve published with @blacklaces

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? My OTPs are Maxiel and SessxKag. I do love me some Dewis as well

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? So far, I don’t have a new WIP for F1 just yet. I do have a lot of half baked ideas written in my notes app. But I have 1 IY one that…. I dream about finishing but I know it’ll never happen. Its already been 10 years and it was supposed to be a whole ass epic plot. Its sat at 69k words….it would have easy been 100k. Thats not happening I feel

16. What are your writing strengths? Honestly, I’m not sure. I think its my dialogue? I’ve been trying to get better as descriptions. Honestly Idk lmao. My writing strength might be comedy? Idk idk– if someone knows, please tell me?

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Angst, or keeping the mood angsty. I’ve been working on my pacing and descriptions

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I don’t do it anymore. I used to (for IY its a little harder because the original show is Japanese set in feudal Japan so a lot of the nouns are Japanese) But for F1 I just write with the assumption that everyone is speaking English and if they aren’t then I’ll say it. Like there was a note in Adore you to assume any dialogue between these two characters are in Italian. Because, of course, the scene was set in Italy. I’m in my “here is some dialogue” he said in Dutch era.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Either InuYasha or Yuu Yuu Hakusho. I can’t remember, but it probably was IY

20. Favorite fic you've written? I think its Tennis AU!! I truly love Tennis!Dan so so much! Enchanted AU is coming in a close second. 2Wrecked2Furious is my baby so I don’t think I can reasonably count it fairly.

Tagging...... @blacklaces @purplesallthewaydown @flawlessassholes if you haven't as yet/want to. Also anyone else <3

[vetustamorla]

I'm here with the writing asks as I promised! and I have a few hehehe: 11, 12, 16, 22, 41, 61 (out of the whole of la noche eterna), and 68

omg good luck to me 🙏 i'm a little tipsy so this might be a mess

11. Do you write scenes in order, or do you jump around?

i do write in order!!! this wasn't always the case but for the last few minds i just have to have the knowlegde that i got through This bit to get to this other bit, or else my mind gets stuck. however, having done both, i think both are pretty great

12. Do you outline your fics?  If yes, how detailed are your outlines?  How far do you stray from them?

bfhdbfdbvhjfd i """outline"""........it's more of a braindump? i write out bits of scenes and dialogues and details like i am describing them to myself and go off that, dedicating half of my screen to that and half to the document i am writing in. it has worked Wonders and allowed me to take some pressure off my brain by having these very detailed, very silly notes to go off

16. Do you write by hand, on your phone, or on your laptop?

on my laptop!!! but years ago i was pretty much only writing on my phone. i have carpal tunnel problems so by hand is a no-go for me

22. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process?  How do you come up with titles?

.........it depends???? but mostly during or after. the titles are pretty much always from songs, or reiterations of the song lyric, that i've been listening to while writing. i've never been very original in my titling nor am i pretending to be tbh

(fun fact: make my world stop, everyone (no one)'s favourite fic, was pretty much from the very beginning called yuck in my document bc i'd been listening to charli xcx so much vhfdvngdjfnbg however later on the tone changed and i had to adapt the title with that </3)

41. Who’s your favorite character you’ve written?

mine is also leon i think 😭😭😭😭 i went so heavily on his mindset and i feel like i know him from the inside out now; it's unlike anything i've ever written before. in the past my favourite character was silva from my technically-rpf-but-not-really series, for the same reasons, because i focused so heavily on his psyche and felt like i know his every, even the worst, emotion at all times. with leon i'm happy to also explore the happier side of things and that's what makes it so enjoyable to write, the intricacies to explore with his character are pretty much endless!

61. In la noche eterna, what’s your favorite scene that you wrote?

it has to be between these two for me:

one: the part of the porn bit in when eden was lost where luis finally drops the pretense and lets leon see him and feel him and comfort him. that just... that's been on my mind pretty much as soon as the idea for this fic was born, and it made me uncomfortable to write because of how fucking hard it went, how bit by bit luis goes from masking and keeping up appearances to getting leon to make it better but without commiting and to, finally, accepting it. accepting the pain. living with it. living through it.

two: the exchange between the merchant and leon in make my world stop. this might be an unobvious one but i enjoyed SO much proverbially hitting the reader on the arm like ehm, hello, small reminder that the merchant while awesome is still in fact a ganado! and seeing him forget that compassionate and helpful part of himself in lieu of being drawn to leon, to the plaga in leon, was really fun to write. and really spooky.

[send me a fic ask or a few!]

[bluedalahorse]

2. Do you read/reread your own fics?

3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

13. How much planning do you do before writing?

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

Thanks for the ask!

2. Do you read/reread your own fics?

I do. Sometimes for the purpose of reminding myself what I wrote before and making sure later chapters line up with that (though of course there are inconsistencies in my longfic anyway) and but sometimes just for fun. Usually I’m rereading my own stuff because I can’t sleep and it helps to have something familiar and soothing, but not something so new and novel that it makes me more awake and I’m never able to fall back asleep again. And hey, I write the stuff I like to read, so it works.

3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

Don’t make me choose, I love all my children equally! Well, okay, maybe I’m glad that the Gundam Wing fic circa 2000 with the fangirl Japanese and the horrendously mischaracterized evil Relena is gone from the internet forever. I do not miss my era of hating on fictional female characters.

If I had to pick some favorite parts of what I’ve written so far (because I haven’t written a lot of short fics, more like longer stuff) I like chapters 11-15 of Heart and Homeland, which take place at a ball at the Ehrencronas’ estate. So many events and relationships happened in those chapters, it felt sort of like writing a season finale. We’re now getting in to chapters that feel more like a series finale, and it’s just as exciting.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Terrain Boundaries Territory, my second person fanfic-in-verse where Sara is Getting Revenge On August. It was the first fic I’d posted to the internet for about seven years! Even though it is now heavily AU based on how season 2 played out, I’m glad I took the risk to write something in a completely unusual format, and then I’m glad I posted it to AO3. Sometimes it’s worth just putting your ideas out there and seeing what happens!

13. How much planning do you do before writing?

It depends. Also, there are also different types of planning that I do.

One way that I plan is by making big structural outlines. For Heart and Homeland, @heliza24 and I have a lot to keep track of, so we work in thematically linked batches of chapters. 1-3 was our first batch, 4-6 our second batch and so on. Each batch is a tab on a spreadsheet, and we then have a line for each letter, prose scene, whatever, along with a summary, who the thing is assigned to, and a link to the document with the thing. This helps us keep the flow of the story relatively structured, though occasionally we end up adding and subtracting ideas as we write things out, as well as flipping the order of certain scenes once we know how things are working.

Here’s what the spreadsheet can look like:

(Blue means something is assigned to me, yellow means it’s something assigned to Heliza. Also, sometimes our summaries get snarky, but because this was very early on in our plotting process I was being relatively serious.)

For a shorter work, I might not be as concerned about a big structural outline. 

When it comes to planning out scenes, I will give myself a few minutes before I write a scene to make some notes about what I’m about to work on. I try to think about, what is the purpose of the scene? How do each character’s emotions shift (or not?) What are the things that happen? What important lines of dialogue do I need to remember? What images/appeals to the reader’s senses are going to give us clues about a character’s emotional state? That’s usually half a page of jotting—I mostly try to get down the things I don’t want to forget. I don’t try to get everything in a scene because sometimes that comes out while writing.

One more thought about planning: sometimes a season drops in the middle of a longfic and you end up adjusting things from your original plans! We wrote the first 19 chapters of H & H in the months between season 1 and season 2, and while we’re keeping 95% of our original plans intact, we did make some alterations and play with some storylines based on season 2 plots. For instance, we were able to use Marcus and Jan-Olof as part of the story where originally we were gonna have to invent some OCs. So season 2 turned out pretty useful for our plotting!

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

Answered that in this post with probably too much text.

If you want just one line, though, my inner twelve-year-old always giggles too much in this one Heart and Homeland letter where August is writing Erik early on, and he says, Were [Simon] not so dedicated to his studies or so adept at fencing, I would have a difficult time supporting Wilhelm’s continued association with him. If, after reading this, you have your own concerns, please send word and I will explicitly forbid any further intercourse between the pair.

Look, if you’re writing a 19th century AU and you can’t make a joke using the historic meaning of the word intercourse at least once, then what’s the point?

22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

Yes and no. I have a general idea but as I write themes develop, and then that helps me shape what the end is going to be like. It’s hard to get that balance of catharsis though! Endings are challenging.

Thanks for playing along! If anyone else wants to send me some numbers, the ask game is here.

[ifmywishescametrue]

hi kennedy! i was wondering if you could tell us how this is how you fall in love came to be? as in, how did the idea first come to your mind, and has it changed much since that firts idea? also, i'm really curious about how much time you've been working on it 👀❤️

hi ari! I absolutely can do that, but bear with me because it's long!

I had to scroll through my google doc history to find when it started, but apparently I got on the idea for it on August 23, 2021 lol. I'd forgotten this but I guess it came for an AU bingo that I was sort of doing (but definitely didn't complete). It was supposed to be the College AU square and all the doc had at first was this:

"Idea:  pre-serum steve wants to lose his virginity before he graduates from college, doesn't really know tony but asks him to be the one to do it (seems likely he would say yes), turns into friends with benefits, they both catch feelings, mutual pining and all the fun things"

That initial idea didn't go very far until April 2022, when another bingo started and I thought I'd incorporate those squares. I absolutely missed that deadline, so as you can see, there's a recurring theme here of me failing hard at bingos.

But those squares were: virginity, Netflix, Edwin Jarvis, Bronx, Kissing in the Car, Victor von Doom

All of those are hilarious now, because Jarvis and Victor von Doom aren't even mentioned in the final version, and Steve and Tony never end up in the Bronx. But, they started me on an outline that evolved over time and helped a lot.

I wrote really sporadically from April-August 2022, then stopped completely in September-October. I felt like it wasn't turning out very well, so I went to other projects and wrote/posted those instead. When I came back to it, it turned out I actually really liked it.

I think there were 7 or 8 chapters written at the time I came back to it. I edited those, then kept going and so, so much of my initial outline changed. Entire scenes got scrapped, some parts were moved around or combined, and a few minor plotlines disappeared all together. The only major thing I kept from chapters 9-19 was the ending, but it was initially supposed to be 26 chapters, I think.

I didn't know exactly who these characters were at the time I outlined it, though, so it had to change as they developed into themselves. Like, there was supposed to be some plotline for the ~drama~ of Tony showing up at Steve's dorm drunk, because he was upset after a phone call with his mom. But it turned out that this Tony just wouldn't do that after everything I'd already written him to be. So, him talking to Steve about his mom got put into chapter 12 instead to preserve some pre-written dialogue I had, and now there's kind of no real drama between him and Steve specifically. (And I certainly stressed over that for months, for the record, but then I decided that not everything needs angst like that.)

This fic was the first multi-chaptered one that I didn't start posting until it was completely done, so I had more freedom to make changes, but also I kind of thought I might never finish it without the posting pressure lol. It did end up taking almost a year and a half, but I'm really happy with the way it ended up!

And I also may or may not have started writing a companion fic from Tony's pov 👀 and it may or may have 15 planned chapters.

[greenhikingboots]

Hey, for the bts of Fic Writing : 4 10 12 15 17. Thanks and Happy New Year🥰❤️

LOULA! Thanks for playing along. I'm so flattered you care to know. Here are my lengthy answers because I do not know how to be concise.

4. Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline? I outline but I stray A LOT. Wait, let me explain that more accurately. It’s more like a continuous cycle of outline, write and stray, publish a chapter, re-outline the next few chapters, write and stray again — and on and on like that. Usually the straying happens because I can’t commit to secret pining as long as originally intended. Like, I give in and let my characters reveal some feelings too soon, then I have to figure out how to make the later plot points I have planned fit into a different emotional context. Which sometimes means changing the plot points. And then! Because the other changes that have occurred, I often feel as though I can no longer include some gut-wrenching conflict I had planned. I'm like, “They've come too far for that buffoonery now." So I have to soften the blow instead. Basically, I’m not as good at letting my characters suffer as I’m “supposed" to be according to typical writing advice. But that’s when I remind myself it’s fanfiction and I'm here to have fun! So it's all good. ❤ 10. Do you enjoy writing dialogue, exposition, or plot, the most? That’s a question for me. I think I’m pickiest about dialogue because I value it the most. I mean, these are romance stories I'm writing, right? And people fall in love by connecting emotionally which happens in large part through dialogue, right? That’s how I see it anyway. So it’s a double-edged sword. Dialogue is the part I like least because I put pressure on myself and then overthink it. But it's also the part I like best because it’s so important and feels SO GOOD when it turns out well. Plus I just LOVE making Jon say romantic things to Sansa — in both understated and over the top ways. It's my favorite thing ever. BUT! I’ll also add that I have some stretches of exposition I’m really proud of. In Chapter 1 of Inevitable I did a big background information dump right away, which (to bring up typical writing advice again) is a no no, right? But I don’t care. I think the whole chapter flows really well and it sets up Jon’s characterization perfectly. AND! Him thinking he can never be as good as Ned or offer Sansa a relationship as good as her parents is the whole crux of the story dammit! And it’s all subtly included right there in Chapter 1. Hell, it’s all right there in the first sentence! And I’m proud of that. 🤪 12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to? I had a S7/8 Fix It Fic that I took down while it was still a WIP. I re-worked and re-published the first half, ending it in a happy but intentionally ambiguous way. Mighty Love & Better Dreams — one of my less popular works, about 25k words if anyone is interested. But anyway, I’ve got another 12,000 words or so left — the second half of the incomple version I took down — that I’d still like to clean up and get back on AO3 someday. To finish it, I have to lean further into Political!Jon and Dark!Dany than I’ve done before, which I find intimidating (especially writing Dark!Dany. I agree that's how it'll go in the books, but how do I write it!? Someone help!) But like I said, I’ve got about 12,000 words already and a lot of it I really like. So it would be a shame to waste it, so to speak, by never finishing. So that’s my answer: Fix It trope featuring Political!Jon and Dark!Dany. 👀 15. A Hollywood producer tells you that they want to film just one of your fics? Which fic would you want it to be?

Sorry, this answer might not be fun because it isn’t a Jonsa fic. Also I'm going to cheat and say I want it to be a TV show not a film. No that that's out of the way... I have a Dramione story I took down quite a while ago, Between the Lines, because I want to eventually rework it and republish it. It’s got the makings to be a 300k word epic told in a non-linear way (which is an idea I revisited recently when I wrote A Good Chance) and a teen ensemble cast type thing, which is popular on TV, right? Also... okay I’ll admit it, I daydream about changing that fic enough you can no longer recognize it as fanfiction. Then I could publish it as a traditional, original book (slim chance but that's why I called it a daydream).

I’m pretty over Dramione though, so maybe if I started thinking of it as a Jonsa AU it’d be easier to to craft it into something new but with some of the important plot points I still like. Maybe?

Woof. Really letting my true self show here. How embarrassing! ☠

17. What fic are you most proud of?A Boy in His Cups might still be my favorite fic I’ve ever written — my first Jonsa one-shot. IMO, the emotional beats are a tiny bit rocky towards the end, but otherwise it’s a very polished fic (maybe because I’ve gone back and edited it so many times.)

It’s Jon’s POV with pining and angst and fluff and confession of feelings and it fits so well with canon concepts. So bascailly all of my favorite things rolled into one. I am the target audience and I just love it!! Maybe someday I’ll write a sequel from Sansa’s POV and call it A Girl in Her Cups. 💋 Holy cow! That's a lot of words. Did you even read it all? Won't blame you at all if not. Thanks again for the ask, Loula. You're a gem. XO.

[beauzos]

12, 18, 25 ( for fics and/or original work of course! )

Fanfiction Writing Asks

12. Do you outline your fics? If yes, how detailed are your outlines? How far do you stray from them?

Oh, great question! It kind of depends. For one-shots of any length, I probably have written down my scene ideas and any dialogue I don't want to forget, and I may have a couple sentences about how I intend to go about it, but it's pretty loose. I just kind of extrapolate from there and figure it out on the fly. I have a personal server for storing lots of different things, and I have a couple writing channels dedicated to just dumping ideas I get so I don't forget. I got in the habit of doing this when writing A Change of Heart and it's incredibly helpful, because I don't remember have the shit I come up with otherwise, lol. But you can kinda see I'm just theowing every idea in there in case I want to use it, and then once I've used it or changed my mind, I delete it from the channel.

Insofar as long fics or projects go, I do much stronger outlines because, of course, there's much more to figure out. SOBR had a big outline done before I touch pen to paper for it at all, and I did it again recently with a potential project I wanna write, but haven't been motivated to yet. But you can see I put a lot more effort into the formatting.

The Pawn spoilers, if anyone cares.

So yeah! It just depends on how much information is needed. Sometimes, my outlines don't always wind up being fully followed. Things change during the writing process, you know how it is, but a lot of my ideas usually make it in. Like, when I just looked over my SOBR outline from last year, nearly everything made it in, and if certainly things were scrapped, then a similar idea made it in in its place.

18. Do you enjoy research? Which fic of yours required the most research?

Kinda depends. I don't love having to scrounge for really particular information, but I do love to learn and research, so it just depends on how much trouble it was for me. I like to be accurate and I like to do at least basic research for tackling something. I had to do quite a lot of research for SOBR, and I found that fun. I read Cattle Kingdom and used my background knowledge on the era since it was already my area of expertise-- and also picked stuff up from other history books of the era that I read for fun, like the Custer books.

I also watched a whole like, half an hour video about breaking down a deer so I could write chapter 4, even though it's such a small detail. I just want to know what I'm talking about before I write it down, because otherwise I make big mistakes. Research can be fun!

SOBR, of course, was the most research-intensive because it's historical fiction. I better know my stuff for something like that, even though you can still do some Western genre handwaving about other details. But I like to be accurate when I can.

25. What’s your favorite part of the writing process (worldbuilding, brainstorming/outlining, writing, editing, etc)?

Brainstorming is fun for sure, and it's easy too. But the actual writing process is my favorite once I get in the groove of it. I have trouble getting into it, but once I have the habit or the drive, it's so fun to write and actually get it all down. I don't find just picturing scenarios very fun. There are a lot of head scenarios I have just for myself that I never intend to write, but for most genuine ideas, I need the outlet of writing to really feel satisfied. Writing is a damn joy.

[horizon-forbidden-sheesh]

Writing Process: Drafting

Sooooo, I started drafting Part 2 almost immediately after Part 1 concluded—and by now I've abandoned my Scrivener file entirely and am doing everything in Google Docs. (I talk about my switch from Scrivener to Google, here. ⚙️)

This time, I didn't have all the journal entries to work from, either. I was starting entirely from a blank slate. So at first, I just let myself WRITE. All the scenes I was most excited about, in no particular order, just to squeeze all the juice out.

I did that for like a month. And then, when I had about 15-20k words of random bits and bobs, I started to put them in order, and develop a through-line. That's where the draft docs & trackers came in.

✏️ Away from Scrivener, I needed some extra organizational tools to house my more general notes, research, & scraps. So, I built this li'l cutie with easy links to all my Google draft files, and included a brief summary that helped me greatly when plotting out the next set 10 chapters for Part 2:

*The chapter titles were updated as my outline changed, but the summaries did not! The descriptor for Chapter 20 is now, like, Chapter 23.

Keeping the descriptors short really helps me stay on task. If I have so much I need to cover in a chapter that it drops my formatting to the next line, I know I probably won't be able to cover everything in ~3,000-5,000 words.

✏️ Now, that's just the first page of the "Table of Contents." As of today, it's 13 pages long, and it also houses a TON of notes and working drafts and snippets of dialogue that I am saving for future, as-yet-unspecified chapters.

It's really messy—and sometimes when I'm out & about and my service is shit, I whip open my old Notes app, just to get a thought down. Here, have a taste of what's been rattling around in my brain...

Dialogue often starts as just the dialogue. I layer in tags & descriptors later, during the editing process. Most of the conversations I've written started with me talking to myself alone in the car, in the shower, or while washing dishes. (This works for copywriting too. My best ideas almost NEVER come to me while I'm sitting-down-looking-at-a-screen. Of course.)

For instance, that same conversation made it from the Notes app into a Google Doc and has since evolved to:

A li'l somethin-somethin from the upcoming Scorcher Season's Chapter 24 🔥

✏️ Once I've got all the major plot points written, I'll go back and write the "boring" stuff in chronological order. Okay, it's not really boring. It's just the filler information that helps a reader get from point A to point B, and I edit as I go. This ends up being like half of the total word count for the full 10 Chapters.

I'm currently hitting this point in Part 3—and you can see below that just writing my favorite parts here and there gets me pretty far on its own. Over the last 3 weeks, I've nearly exhausted my imagination developing the general story arc. Next up, I'll go back and start fleshing out each chapters one by one.

Wanna know something CRAZY?? Over the last ~year, I've noticed that I tend to write nonstop during Mercury Retrogrades. Like, I don't want to do anything else. I'm learning not to schedule any major projects for these ~3 week periods, so I don't blow my deadlines on account of being too obsessed with my fanfic to bother. 😅

After my decision to expand to 4 Parts total, my original ToC Doc got a bit... top heavy. (Also, I got really tired of manually calculating all the word counts.) So, instead of continuing in Docs, I added a tab to my spreadsheet:

*Hiding my chapter summaries so as not to spoil!! 😈

As you can see, I fill in the links as I create the draft docs... and I've already had to split a chapter in half due to scale, so the untitled <Scorcher 7> dropped to Part 4. I'm hopeful I won't have to split any more, so I can end strong on 'Ten Days.'

I don't usually start the finale until the very end, because I've learned that the wonderful comments I receive will sometimes give me extra ideas that I want to ensure make it into the fic!

✏️ Around the time I've fully completed the first 5 chapters, I'll give myself the green light to start posting. That leaves me just enough runway to finish out the rest of the season, and posting on a timeline helps keeps me motivated & accountable!

This is getting kinda long, so I'll write about Trackers & Timelines I've developed along the way in another post.

Thanks for being here! 🖤

xo, Sheesh.

[eighthdoctor]

27, 39, 71

27. What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

favorite by far is when i do something REALLY CLEVER, on accident or on purpose. sometimes this is in planning, sometimes it comes out of the writing, and then i'm smug about it for weeks. like coming up with a 6 month spell cool down has had all kinds of beneficial fallout for the plot, while requiring basically no effort from me to throw in. i'm STILL smug about that and that's been in place for MONTHS

least favorite: i have characters in scene A. i want to end scene A. i want to go to scene B. i don't know how to do this. jo frequently tells me to cut the last 100 words and just close the scene.

39. Share a snippet from a WIP

i know you're not reading it yet but it IS the current WIP so here's the opening of the next chapter of The Power to Manipulate Belief

Katherine starts all days the same way: A cup of tea, black, and any reports that had come in overnight or been judged low priority enough to wait for her attention. This hasn’t changed in twenty five years, and won’t change now, even if she’s in an archaic position, even if everything else about the world goes to hell, even if her daughter is back and then gone and upending everything in her wake, she is going to have her tea and read reports. For three weeks now, like clockwork, one of those reports has come from Jaina. They’re written in a hand so neat it must be magical, but aside from that, they are— She’d stopped getting letters, after Daelin. For all intents and purposes, Jaina had left home at ten—sure, she’d come home for the occasional holiday, something which had dramatically increased when she’d learned how to portal—and for ten years, accordingly, she’d sent letters to Katherine. Childish things at first, then filled with adolescent drama, and then the first thoughts of an adult confronted with an unimaginable crisis. Then they’d ended. Now she’s getting them again, and the contrast illustrates just how much her daughter has changed. The reports are methodically organized, with Jaina’s voice and opinions apparent throughout, but always noted as such, letting Katherine see unadorned facts as well. They are also wide ranging, covering everything from Alliance policy to spying reports—why?—to trade deficits in Stormwind. She’s lost over twenty years of her daughter’s life. In a way, these reports are how Jaina is trying to bridge that gap.

71. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

i write pretty rigorously in chronological order (i may skip the back half of a scene if i get stuck but even then i know more or less where it's going) so not worried about character development there.

for TPTMB, i've been working really hard on having an outline (currently not up to date) and using more of some of scrivener's features which are meant for this.

the outline is just a 1-2 phrase scene description, potentially a second bullet point of any Choice Dialogue that needs to be included, and then i bold it if i've written it. periodically i check back to see OH RIGHT, I NEEDED THAT: eg, sylvanas pointing out that jaina hasn't been reflexively shielding against sylvanas was actually not in the first draft! i wrote the scene, went "hmm it's Missing Something", checked my outline and said "oh fuck duh."

i can also add notes to the doc for later edits so that i can just write the scene--chs 1 and 2 had "add more spy v spy shit" until i decided we'd hit maximum nonsense.

meanwhile in scrivener: this is from chapter 2 so spoiler free

each scene gets its own document. if i decide after writing that actually one scene needs to come before/after something else, easy enough to move. in theory the status column is telling me what needs first edits, what isn't done yet, what needs jo's edits added, etc (i'm not good at keeping this up to date). pov IS helpful because i can filter the whole file by POV and so make sure that, eg, sylvanas's references to jaina are consistent, or jaina has the right throughline in terms of theramore mentions.

and then the date is the date, and i REALLY need to update the later chapters (this is also why i used ch2), but that's part of how i'm keeping track of the timeline in fic.

the REST of keeping track of the timeline is an excel spreadsheet :)